


Dreaming Off Leash

by InterNutter



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterNutter/pseuds/InterNutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Mora had been more amoral than we're used to?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreaming Off Leash

Disclaimer: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and all associated characters belong to Paramount studios and whoever owns them. This story is all that belongs to me. Please do not nick it.

Dreaming Off Leash  
InterNutter

Odo Ital looked up at the only other being he hated more than Mora. Gul Noxx. The Cardassian was waiting to hear him talk. A breakthrough that had thrown this lab into chaos.  
"Well, animal? Speak."  
Odo thought about remaining silent. Would it make Mora suffer? He looked towards Brin, but there was no guidance there. He was too busy trying to look harmless under the watchful eye of the guards.  
"Don't look at the other animals... Look at me! I ordered you to speak!"  
Odo Ital stood straight, for all the scant height he could glean, took a breath, and chose obedience and rebellion in one word.  
"Spoonhead."  
The entire room breathed in. A guard by Brin knocked the old man down with the butt of his phaser rifle. A second guard pinned Mora to the wall. Barking of commands, all talking over each other. Some contradictory.  
Brin was leaking. Red began to pool under his head.  
"Attend!" Gul Noxx caused a silence so profound that Odo could hear the little creatures skittering through the walls. "Who taught you that word, animal? Who dies for that insult?"  
Brin was still breathing. Odo forced his attention on Gul Noxx. Odo had heard the word, casually flung about when there were no Cardassians within hearing. He hadn't known people died because of it.  
There was only one real choice. "Kill Odo Ital."  
"...no..." Mora breathed.  
Noxx turned to Mora. "Is it telling me that it came up with that word on its own?"  
"I... surmise so, Gul Noxx. We certainly never use such language here in the lab."  
Noxx raised his personal phaser. Odo stared into his eyes for a tense moment.  
"Killing it would be far too easy," he decided, holstering the weapon again. "Mora, do something about its manners."

Questioning Mora gained nothing. Soldiers had dragged Brin away hours ago and all Odo had to do was stare at the drying patch of blood on the floor. Brin's blood. Mora was working hard on something Odo Ital didn't understand.  
"He found me, you know," he said.  
"Mmm," said Mora.  
"Not here. Back in the old ship. He found me. If it wasn't for the Cardassians... He'd have been working with me. Not you working on me."  
"Mmm."  
"He read my Pagh."  
"Mmm."  
"While I was still a liquid, Mora."  
"Do your drills, Odo Ital."  
"He was special to me."  
"I don't hear shapeshifting..."  
Odo sighed. Mora wasn't listening. He was busy. Odo fired up the hologram and began copying the illusions in reality right beside them. The goal - greater detail and faster speed. He was sick to death of drills, but it worked, according to Mora. At least, it worked to gain more grant money for actual Bajoran research.  
He'd spent six years working on his humanoid form, and he already knew what it was like to be a performing monkey. He hated parties and loathed being sociable. But not nearly so much as he hated being locked in the lab with Mora.  
Mora, who promised that once he was "ready", Odo would be allowed to go out into real society and never look back.  
And who didn't bother to define "ready".  
So Odo practiced his drills while Mora worked. Practiced until his every cubic centimeter ached, until his Core cried out from within. Until it was all he could do to slide into his container and wait for the exhaustion to leave.  
He only left his container and regained humanoid form when it was past time for him to feed.  
Mora had dozed off in his chair, half of something assembled on his desk. Padds full of data piled around him.  
Odo picked up a shock wand and zapped him.  
"Ow!"  
"Are you adding starvation to you list of tortures?"  
"You shocked me!"  
"You shock me every day." Odo kept a firm grip on the shock wand. "Hurts. Doesn't it?"  
"I don't have time for this."  
"I need to feed."  
Mora tisked and sighed and grumbled, collected his pass from the lockbox, and left to go visit the supervised replicators. It would take him ten minutes, twenty if the Cardassian guards we feeling tetchy, to retrieve Odo's sustenance.  
Naturally, while Mora was gone, Odo read as much as he could of the padds scattered about. Molecular bonding? Gene signatures? Failsafe control?  
Odo couldn't understand one word in ten. Context supplied no sense to any of it. And, to make matters worse, Mora had made sure the lab computer wouldn't respond to him. No information at all, save that which he could glean. Or the scant answers that Mora rarely provided.  
Nothing.  
He put the things back in order - or what passed for the order that Mora left them in - and waited. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty-five. Forty.  
Mora strolled back in, canister under one arm.  
"Forty minutes... Was there a problem with the guards?"  
"Worse. A queue." He absently plonked the canister down on a shelf and went back to his work. "Lab seventeen must have some extra... Subjects."  
And didn't everyone who worked here so studiously and creatively ignore what went on in lab seventeen? What he meant was, the Cardassians had more orphans to experiment on. And nobody who had the sympathy for them had the power to do a single thing.  
Odo counted them all as his unwitting siblings in this labyrinth of torture. Somehow, if he could ever get them out, he vowed he would.  
But for now, it was wait and learn a way.  
And feed. He had to feed.  
The stuff was gone too soon. He wanted more, but the day's ration was the day's ration. No amount of bargaining, cajoling or pestering would alter it. Protestations only lead to comparisons to children in the camps. They would be eager to receive even half the volume he got once a day.  
Odo protested that perhaps a greater concentration would be appreciated, and Mora griped that *his* concentration on his drills would be better.  
Just one more argument amongst many.  
"Ha! Done!"  
"What's done?" said Odo Ital.  
"Something you need. Something we need... to help us out." He handed Odo a silver thing. Triangular, with rounded corners. The seam was welded tight.  
"What is it?"  
"Just put it inside yourself, Ital," said Mora in his Bored-With-Arguing voice. "Completely. Inside."  
No further answers. And Mora had worked all through the night on this thing. He surrounded it in himself, feeling the peculiar shape of it just under his surface.  
Mora pressed a few buttons on the controller he'd built.  
Odo Ital tried to ask what it was for, but all that came out were his native sounds. Inchoate burblings with no meaning at all. The device! He tried to eject it, but it wouldn't come. Fought to pry it loose from himself, but all he got was pain.  
Then Mora pressed another button, and his whole body felt like each atom wanted to go in a different direction, and then explode. He lost cohesion, then the ability to even fight the device out of his body.  
"No more lethal word choices. No more escape attempts. No more alleged funny business. From you. Ever."  
Odo tried looming, using every nightmarish mutation he could think of.  
Mora pressed a button, and the agony descended again. "I believe I said, 'no more funny stuff'."  
Odo Ital returned to his usual shape and glowered.

Seventeen years later...  
"Odo, be a Razorcat!"  
Odo folded his arms and glared.  
Mora glared right back, fingering the remote. "*Must* we go through this every single exhibition?"  
Odo carefully unfolded his arms, concentrated, and Became a Razorcat. If there was one solace, it was the occasional fleeting elation that came with getting a transformation as pure and exact as possible. The understanding of the form.  
Of course, every time he came close, someone wanted to see him Be something else. And if he was the least bit slow... Mora would use the device.  
Voices.  
They were coming.  
Mora smiled and welcomed them by ranks. Commander, Lieutenant, Major, Doctor... Most of them were Starfleet. One was Bajoran military. A woman all in red. She stood out against the Starfleet colours like a flower in winter. Like a fire in the darkest night.  
He padded up behind Mora and inspected them. The thin one with the dusky skin managed an unsure, "N-nice kitty..."  
"I don't understand," said the dark one. "You had a fantastic discovery from the Denorious belt?"  
Mora smirked his insufferable smirk and said, "Odo, be a tanavian hawk."  
Odo reared up as if to strike, but at the last instant shrank and made his forelimbs into wings, taking orders and hoping for a touch, a glimpse, of reward. No such luck. He chose to land on the Major's shoulder. Croaked out something that could sound like 'help' in High Bajoran.  
No reaction.  
Mora was pontificating, doing the usual origin story, this time backed up with a few fids on the holodisplay. Did he have time?  
"Odo. Mirror dance."  
No. Mora was going to show off how well he could copy things, then juxtapose it with how awful he was at an individual appearance.  
But Odo had a plan.  
He flew to the stage and copied Mora. Every gesture. Even the shape of his mouth as he talked. The instant the man's back was turned, he flash-shifted to a Cardassian version of his captor. Every motion still the same. Of course he quickly shifted back the instant Mora turned back.  
Mora was none the wiser.  
The visitors reacted, though. Genuine surprise, all around.  
"...step up to the mark, here," Mora was saying. "One at a time, you can each see for yourself what a marvellous mimic it is."  
They formed a cluster and conferred. The thin one was up first. Odo performed to spec, copying exactly everything he saw. One of them distracted Mora. Turned him away, and Odo added a pattern of wounds and burns to his image of the thin, young man. Instead of the expected tricorder, Odo put the device in his hand. Let him scan it.  
Next, the female with the fascinating pattern of spots. The instant someone began distracting Mora, he showed her as emaciated and beaten. The device in a wound where her voice box could have been.  
He repeated the message for the dark male, a transformation all the more shocking because he was stout.  
For the Bajoran woman, he had something far more visceral in mind. He shrank down to the shape of a child he'd once glimpsed in Lab seventeen. Shaven-headed, starvation-thin, beaten and burned and wounded. He mouthed, "Help me," to display the missing tongue.  
She reached out to hold his hand. Clung to him, even when he shapeshifted back to her duplicate.  
Mora laughed. "You can't take him home with you, Major. For a start, you haven't the faintest idea how to care for him."  
To her credit, she smiled and said, "How *do* you care for him?"  
Patronizing grin. "I'm not going to give away all my secrets. I can't have you smuggling home the only member of his species for... personal amusement?"  
She gestured with the hand he still held. "I think he likes me."  
Mora sighed. "Odo, be yourself."  
Odo relaxed into his everyday shape. Pale and gaunt and blue eyes burning imaginary holes in Mora's head.  
And, as Mora kept telling him, ugly to Bajoran eyes.  
"Still want him?" smirked Mora.  
Odo let his grip slacken, his eyes close and his head hang. Any minute, now, they would shrink away.  
"I, for one, would love an opportunity to study Odo," said the spotted one, taking possession of his other arm. "I have lots of equipment on the station I'm simply dying to try on him."  
"You're welcome to come with us," said the thin one. "Tell us all your astonishing techniques for controlling a creature that is, by definition, uncontrollable."  
"But I don't even have time to pack," objected Mora.  
Odo disentangled himself - gently, of course - and fetched his pail. Everything else he needed was under Mora's control.  
Mora winced and muttered, "Key words..." a sigh. "Fine. I suppose I can replicate anything I need when I'm up there as your guest." he opened the lockbox and grabbed a few pieces from it, pocketed them, and clapped his hands. "Let's go."

After seeing his intermediary, liquid form, Kira half expected Odo to feel cold to the touch. His hand was warm in hers. Solid, even when shapeshifting through his liquid state.  
She offered him her hand as they were exiting the research centre, and had a genuine smile for him when he took it. That smile soon faded when he slowed down and began stepping in an odd pattern.  
"What's the matter with you? I thought you'd be glad to get away from here."  
The shapeshifter pointed.  
Ants.  
He was stepping around ants.  
It wasn't far to the runabout. Kira did her best to pick a path clear of small life forms and tried to be quicker about it. Sisko was right. Mora was hiding the fact that Odo was sentient.  
The real trick was going to be proving it when Odo didn't apparently have a voice to say so himself.  
Kira already knew he was sentient. Animals didn't worry about what they trod on. But according to Starfleet, there were arrays upon arrays of tests.  
One of them would be happening on the trip up to the station. It was her job to set Odo into the rear compartment. Jadzia was going to be the one to leave a datapadd open and accessible, blank document ready for editing, within his reach.  
If he could read, he would leap at an opportunity to write them a message.  
They'd all heard the bird strangle out the word, 'help', when he had roosted on her shoulder.

"Doesn't he talk at all?" Kira asked as she took her seat.  
Mora smiled his indulgent smile. "There have been a few mono-verbal utterances, here and there. Even fewer have been... contextually appropriate. Odo is a mimic, nothing more. Using the occasional word is just another display of mimicry. Like a Jemja parrot... or a Terran Lyre bird."  
"So you're familiar with xenomimics?" asked Bashir.  
Jadzia pretended to search the area around her station while Mora waxed lyrical about his studies, and how it lead to his unique job. That man really did love the sound of his own voice. He didn't even notice her when she muttered a purely theatrical, "Darn it," and left her station for the rear compartment. Would he hear her setting up the datapadd? She turned it's volume down before rapidly hitting the keys that set up a blank document and a Bajoran keyboard. She all but handed it to him and whispered, "Go ahead. It won't bite."  
Very slowly, checking for Mora, he took the device.  
"We'll keep him busy." Jadzia winked at him. Then returned to the front compartment with an aggravated noise.  
Mora was still talking. No surprise there.  
"Looking for this, old man?" Ben gestured with another datapadd.  
"Thanks," said Dax. She worked on it for a few seconds, then said, over Mora's story, "Did I ever tell you about the fishing expedition at Mylar five?"  
"Four times," said Ben. "Every telling, unique."  
"It isn't a good fish story if you don't change it every time you tell it." And done. Objective achieved, code phrase for success delivered. Though Dax couldn't help thinking that Mora wouldn't have noticed if Dax had done it all with the accompaniment of a full brass band.

A three hour trip, including acceleration and deceleration, and Mora was *still* talking about himself. Loath though he was to interrupt a man on his favorite topic, Julian still had a job to do.  
"We're here, sir," he said. "Dax will show you to the science lab, while I clear Odo in the infirmary."  
"Clear him?"  
"Just to be sure he isn't carrying anything nasty." Julian smiled. "Standard procedure. Shouldn't take too long."  
"But--"  
Right on cue, Jadzia snagged him by the arm and ploughed onwards with an exuberant, "I can't wait to show you all my wormhole research. It's really quite enlightening..."  
Trust Dax to know exactly how to captivate a man. Julian went aft to find Odo sitting innocently where Kira had left him, no trace of a datapadd in sight. He looked under the table, in the bunks, in the seats... Everywhere a datapadd could plausibly or implausibly become hidden.  
He wouldn't have eaten it... Would he?  
Julian suspected he might be that hungry. That's why he pick-pocketed Mora's replicator chip at the first opportunity. Time was wasting. "Come along with me, Odo. I'm going to see exactly what Mora's been feeding you... And how much good or ill it's really doing."  
Odo practically trod on Julian's heels all the way there, as if he was anxious to be fed. Julian, entirely sympathetic, widened his stride and quickened his pace.  
He knew the drill from treating other survivors of the Cardassian experiments in the research centre. Never block access to the door. Stay calm and reasonable, and explain absolutely everything about what you're doing and why. Never lie about any pain any procedure might cause and always, *always* keep things positive.  
"We will be running tests," he warned, "but I promise you that we will be doing everything to keep them benign. Primary among these tests is going to be how you metabolize your... sustenance. I may even be able to recommend some safe supplements for you. I will be using a tricorder for the most part, and my assistant will be setting you some simple cognitive tasks. Helps pass the time."  
And those simple cognitive tasks were part of an intelligence test.  
Nurse Tranga was just finishing the setup in the recovery suite as they arrived. She, too was a survivor of Cardassian experiments. She would only allow a surgeon near her if it was a matter of life and death. Which was why she wore a primitive sign-speaker glove rig instead of opting for a vocal implant.  
She spoke Bajoran sign language, and the rig translated it into words.  
"Hello Doctor. This our new friend?"  
"Odo, this is Nurse Tranga. She'll be helping us, today," said Bashir. "Nurse, this is Odo. We spoke about him earlier."  
"Hello Odo. I heard you can't talk. Would you like learn sign?"  
Vigorous nodding.  
"I teach, we test, all right?" she guided him over to the testing area while Julian attempted to get something of a baseline reading. And decipher the contents and usage of Mora's replicator chip.

Bajoran sign language was, naturally, invented by necessity. Those who were maimed so that they couldn't speak, couldn't hear, or both, had to communicate somehow. And there was often little time to wait for words to be written on a slate.  
It was 'spoken' largely with the sinister hand, because the other hand was busy holding, pushing, or loading something. And it evolved from combat signals. Whole phrases were sometimes encapsulated in one gesture. Spelling, when necessary, was done with phonemes.  
Odo watched and learned.  
"These blocks have little pattern," Nurse Tranga signed. "Screen show big pattern. You make big pattern out of little pattern."  
If she had leisure time, she would use intermediary words. But to speak quickly, she stuck to the basic ideas. And so far, he'd picked up a few words... And left the datapadd where Bashir was bound to spot it once he looked up from the tricorder.  
The patterns quickly became complicated, but he wasn't worried. Two-dimensional thinking was a breeze.  
And, once every five tasks, they would feed him. He already felt better than he had in years. If he wanted, he could go faster by shapeshifting his way around the puzzles. Except there was always the possibility of upsetting his hosts.  
They were tests, not tasks. Tests of his mind. His ability to think.  
Two dimensional patterns. Three dimensional patterns. Puzzles that required partial backtracking to solve them. Puzzles that changed with each added piece, relying on logic and planning to solve.  
Puzzles that required exquisite care.  
{be-doop}  
"Dax to the infirmary, have you finished clearing Odo, yet? Doctor Mora's getting anxious."  
"Doctor Mora will be glad to know that Odo is in excellent shape. Astonishing. I'll send him up with nurse Rathgens."

Julian handed the padd over to Sisko. "Dax was right. He is literate, but barely so. My best guess is he gleaned all his learning from material left lying around."  
Sisko raised his brows and read the contents aloud. "Help Odo hunger hunger pain Mora bad bad... Are you sure this isn't random key-pressings corrected by the online dictionary?"  
"Sir... We all know what happens when pre-literate children get hold of datapadds..."  
Sisko grinned at a memory. "I nearly handed in a report that contained the phrase, 'fimbalism finger frink' because Jake got his hands on it."  
"Exactly. No grammar. Here, there is a kind of grammar, but... No punctuation. The doubled words could easily be a form of emphasis."  
"He's hungry, in pain, and blames Mora," Sisko juggled the padd. "All the key elements of a distress call."  
"I'm hurt, someone hurt me, I need help," Julian recited. "So how do we proceed?"  
"Step one would be getting that control device away from Mora."

"So what happens if you're unconscious? If you need help and the leash is just too short?"  
"There's a little switch I turn on when I'm meant to be active, upright... If I'm not upright, it sends an emergency signal to the nearest help. I've thought of everything."  
Odo, parked in an analysis field, was repeatedly signing, _Afraid, afraid,_ whenever she glanced his way. Dax tugged on her ear, a variant of _be calm_, as often as she could get away with it.  
She breathed a sigh of relief when Moryn Adar turned up. The half-Cardassian had conspired to appear meaner than usual.  
"Doctor Mora Pol, you are under arrest for crimes against a sentient being, including, but not limited to repeated torture, withholding of educational facilities, and general depravation. You will be held until such time as the charges can be verified by an independent tribunal. Turn over all electronic devices now, please."  
"You can not be serious!"  
"Turn. Them over. Or have them confiscated by force."  
Odo signed, _Neck. No him touch neck._  
Jadzia got to the peculiar little amulet before Mora could. "Gee. I wonder what this does."  
Odo signed, _Bad. Afraid. No touch bad._  
"Looks like it might be Odo's slave controls to me," said Dax. "I'd try one of these little buttons, but Odo's saying they're all bad."  
"He's not saying anything! He can't say anything! I made... sure..."  
Odo walked up to him and signed, _I learn,_ which Dax dutifully translated.  
Moryn snapped on the restraints, and frisked Mora for any other hidden devices. "It is my duty to inform you that the tribunal may go easy on you if you inform us now how your slave control device works. If you withhold such information in order to purposely harm the individual under your control, it will negatively effect your defense. Do you understand."  
"I," said Mora, "invoke my right to legal counsel." He smiled his condescending smile, "Good luck figuring it out. Too many key-presses with the wrong DNA? And that little device locks on 'pain'."  
"Thank you for the confessions," said Moryn. "Now I can officially add slavery to the list of charges."  
"First, you have to prove he's worth freeing," sneered Mora.

"Mora wasn't lying about much. Proximity sensors keep Odo away from it, *and* within a certain boundary. A Bajoran has to press the buttons or he suffers from the fatal shutdown," Dax reported.  
"I've widened the perimeter as much as I could," said Kira. "But that isn't a lot. He has to stay within twenty metres of his Bajoran 'keeper'."  
"At least I've been able to improve the nutritional front," said Bashir. "He's still paying back biological debt, but... I'm glad to report there are significant improvements."  
"And on the educational front?"  
"He's learning sign language very quickly. The only problem is we can't get him to wear the sign-speak glove," said Bashir.  
"Odo's technophobic," said Dax. "Almost to an extreme. He needs almost constant reassurance that anything he touches isn't... well... Isn't like the device Mora installed in him."  
Sisko examined the specs they'd been able to wring out of repeated scans. "I'm starting to hate this thing."  
"Imagine what Odo's been through," said Kira. "He's had to spend most of his life living with it."  
"Barbaric," murmured Sisko. "The tribunal is going to demand he testify in his own voice."  
O'Brien, who'd been staring at the available specs, finally spoke up. "When you've got a barbaric problem... maybe you need a barbaric solution."  
"You're not going to suggest eye-for-an-eye justice, are you?" worried Dax.  
Half a smirk. "Maybe for sentencing, but no. Anyone who's been through as many temporal anomalies as I have gets a sort of self-preservational interest in history. Well, back in the twentieth century, they used to surgically extract cancerous tumors, including tumors in the throat."  
"Eeuw," said Kira. "Sounds like a Cardassian torture technique."  
"Most of these victims were adults, so learning sign was more than difficult, and most people didn't bother to learn it... So they made artificial voices."  
"Not in the twentieth century," said Bashir. "They didn't have anything resembling a proper neural interface."  
"Oh, these things were real primitive. A simple device that produced a harmonic vibration and an on-off switch. Might be the kind of tech Odo could feel comfortable with."  
"Get him to help you assemble it," suggested Bashir. "It might help him become even more comfortable."

Odo trailed behind his current guardian, Anara, who was teaching him some of the finer points of Bajoran Sign. Apparently, intermediary words could flow between main words. She told him his style of signing was quick, as if he were in the middle of a permanent emergency.  
Anara could understand *why* he 'spoke' that way, but in order to be understood by a third party as completely sentient, he had to drop the shorthand and use all the words and most of the grammar.  
"Look, I know the message can be understood," she said as she stopped at a door not her own and pressed the door chime. "The whole point is to not make the other party work for it. The less they have to work to understand you, the more likely they are to assume intelligence."  
A human answered the door. "We're not ready, yet. *Miles* decided to launch into some hobby-work..."  
Hobby-work, pronounced, 'Complete and utter waste of time and space'.  
"Aunty 'Nara!" A small child rushed from another room and tackled Anara's legs. "We missed you at the party."  
Odo signed, _Party?_  
The human female sighed. "Molly's convinced Miles and I go to a party when we go out, so she has one with her dolls and her baby-sitter. Hi. I'm Keiko."  
He shook her hand.  
"Could you help Miles with his little... project?" pronounced, 'annoyance'. "He won't stop until it's done."  
Miles was a friendly human with pale skin and copper curls. His work was spread out on a low table, and his tools were... non-standard, unpowered manual tools from previous centuries.  
"Hey, there you are," he grinned. "You might as well lend a hand. This is gonna be for you, when it's done."  
He had to remember the full grammar when he signed, _It won't hurt?_  
"It produces a purely audible sonic buzz. Nothing that should cause discomfort, and the on-off switch will be easily accessible on the unit. Pretty much all of it's ancient technology. Pre-warp by a century or more. Won't even be live until we put the power cell in. Here," he offered two pieces. "Slot these together while I work on the oscillator."  
It was terrifying, at first, handling parts to make a machine that could easily be like the one Mora had created. Miles explained each piece and what it did, how they connected and how they worked together. And, most revealing, used it on himself.  
"nnngreatitworksnnn" he flicked the device off. "You could probably turn it on and off for each word if you're quick enough. But there you go. One voice of your own."  
Odo took it, clicked it on, and dropped it from one hand to another. No bonding. No DNA keys. No electric shocks. Nothing elaborate at all. It would be ungrateful to turn it down.  
He tried it against his throat. "nnnthankyounnn"  
He had a voice.

In spite of all the evidence, in spite of meeting every criteria, Mora was not co-operative. He refused to reveal a single feature of his remote, nor state which button controlled which feature.  
The arbiter sentenced him to solitary without communication, on minimal survival rations, until such time as he was ready to reveal the remote's functions. Even if he changed his mind tomorrow, he would still not breathe the air of freedom for seventeen years. And after *that*, his freedom was subject to another court hearing.  
Odo still had a Bajoran keeper.  
He still had his active 'leash' device bonded to his molecules, forbidding him from talking.  
In the true essence of things, his life was unchanged. He was still a captive. A prisoner. He just had a better quality of captors, who felt guilty by association to what Mora had forced them into doing.  
And one more key difference, alongside his continuing education.  
They were all working with him to try and free him.  
"Just hold it in the middle of the scanner plate, try to keep your coating as thin as you can."  
He half expected Lieutenant Jai to press something on the remote, to reveal himself as... some kind of betrayer, but he just placed the remote on another scanning plate and pressed some controls on his station. "Go."  
The science lab erupted into a flurry of instructions and acknowledgements. They were running several scans simultaneously, from passive to invasive to bordering on hazardous. Through all the spectra, as fast as they could go. For both devices.  
Odo kept waiting for the sharp warning shock as he listened to the babble and percentages from each tech.  
Damn Mora for installing scanner baffles.  
Each tech in the room recited, "Hundred percent... Done!" until they were all finished. Jai snatched the remote up and placed the lanyard so it dangled from around his neck.  
Not even a warning shock from his own device.  
"You can move, now."  
Odo signed, _Thank you,_ even as he took his leash unit back inside his mass. Whether it was conditioning or simple fear, he felt safer without the device exposed. He imagined that the signals from the remote took slightly longer to be received if the device was inside his central mass.  
He'd learned the hard way not to 'swallow' it into his Aside-mass. One of the many automated safeguards prevented him from even attempted internal sabotage. Dax knew about that precaution, but equally quickly, also theorized that a directed subspace pulse might set off the security 'feature' rather than shutting the device down.  
He kept out of the assembled techs' elbow space and attempted to divine meaning from their technobabble.  
It seemed like a veritable torrent of words. Ceaseless and overflowing to his ears, but Dax remained resolute. Her hands danced on the console as a labyrinth of circuitry came together on her screens. Both his leash and Mora's remote.  
_Holy Prophets, help them,_ he prayed inwardly. Always in High Bajoran. He doubted the Prophets would sully themselves with the bastard creole known as Lab. He doubted they listened to him, or even heard him. All his pleas for freedom had been denied.  
"Working hard?"  
He whirled. Kira Nerys could walk very quietly in those heels, when it suited her. She had a bag full of angular things.  
"Hard enough," said Dax. "How was the trip to Tozhat?"  
Where the research centre was.  
"Productive," she jiggled the bag, which clinked. "Twenty-three years of research, footage and experiments... All yours."  
"And a merry Christmas to us all," sighed Dax.  
"Merry what?"  
"Something Ben used to say when someone handed him a pile of work. Or when he handed a pile of work to someone in his command. It's an old Earth midwinter tradition where they exchange gifts... amongst other things."  
"Odo. Wanna come with me?" she signed along with her words out of pure habit. "I'm inspecting a cargo bay, then swinging by the temple. Want to come with me?"  
Odo signed, _I'd like that very much._

Odo struck her as very reserved. A calm in the centre of the storm. Guarded, definitely. Understandably paranoid, certainly. But calm and reserved all the same. He knew the limits and stayed within them, waiting an opportunity. He'd been waiting a long time for it to appear, but he remained alert all the same.  
There was an intensity, there. As if all those years in the crucible had tempered him like a blade in the furnace. Whatever he could learn, he absorbed with all of that intensity. He watched and listened to everything like it was his last chance to see any of it.  
"Don't worry, Odo. We're gonna crack this thing. Sooner or later, we're going to get it out of you."  
_I know,_ he signed. _You saw me._  
It wasn't shorthand. She knew exactly what he meant. He must've sent covert messages to every visitor to that lab ever since he figured out he could get away with it. She'd been the first to actually receive it. To translate it for Sisko and the rest of the Starfleet officers there. Encouraged a plan to run interference while he got the messages across.  
"Maybe you'd like to spend some time with me when you're not on this hideous leash? We could finally talk."  
His lipless mouth smiled, and the coldness in his blue eyes melted. _Talking would be a miracle._  
The cargo was from one of the sketchier traders suspected of bringing narcotics through Bajoran space. They liked to haul their legitimate cargo in scanner-proof containers, which meant extra grunt work to inspect every one of them. Every spare pair of hands was a spare pair of hands.  
According to their lading bill, they had three thousand rapages of toha fruit, loose packed, from Jinjae colony. Kira got halfway down a container before they started falling back in, slowing her down.  
Beside her, Odo was carefully and methodically unpacking the crate he'd opened. He'd probably be quicker than she was. It looked like three thousand rapages. Maybe that was the point. She started unpacking tohas, stacking them on the next crate over.  
Odo whistled. He'd reached the end of the tohas and found a false bottom. _Less space inside,_ he signed. He probed the edges, found a catch.  
Kilo bags of T'yan. Pressed bricks of herbal delight. Bags of blue liquid that could easily be Romulan wine. And an assortment of things Kira couldn't readily identify. All spilled around in the cargo container.  
That was her cue. Tohas spilled out and burst on the floor, and more narcotics were underneath. Odo, and the rest of the assembled inspection crew, followed her lead.  
Fifteen hundred rapages of every drug known to sentient life.  
Well done, Odo.

"I'm telling you, Moran, he could be good in security. Odo's observant, patient. He picked up the hidden compartments under the toha fruit."  
"I can't be his minder," said the half-Cardassian. "I'd have to assign one of my deputies."  
"Fine. Juggle. Whatever. I just think he could do some good. And... it might help him out, too."

On the third cycle, Odo signed, _Have I done something wrong?_  
"No, you're doing brilliant work. Why?" said Boyajian, his current keeper.  
_None of the command staff are visiting. Or taking me._ Time for a confession. _I was looking forward to my time with Major Kira._  
"Major Kira's very busy," Boyajian told him. "Do you... want to spend... time... with her? What would you *do*?"  
_Learn,_ signed Odo.  
"Learn? Learn what?"  
_How to be in society._

"He wants to what?"  
"He wants you to teach him," said Boyajian. "Listen, is it going to be any hurt to just take him along during your time off? Bashir got him stabilized so he doesn't need to eat."  
"Well... I guess he could use some social time..." Kira checked her calendar. "I'll stop by the security office at fifteen hundred hours. Okay?"  
"I'll make certain he's rested."

Odo took a lot more time with his body, now that he knew Major Kira would be coming to collect him. A hint more colour in his clothes. A lot more attention to the details he could muster.  
He shapeshifted his nose smooth again for the fifth time. He was no good at Bajoran noses. May as well admit it.  
Anara answered the door and handed over the remote to Major Kira Nerys. Who looked resplendent in formal dress.

**Author's Note:**

> This is where I ran into a wall. Trying to describe what would go on in a date where one half can't/doesn't talk and the other isn't aware that it's a date... There was a possibility for amusing mistakes, etc. And I was playing with possibilities. I may yet continue this. Help is, of course, appreciated :)


End file.
